


a withering echo

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1408471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>We shouldn't be doing this.</i> It becomes a sort of mantra, starts with Sholto, muttered, sighed, wheezing in the damp air and John can feel the words under his skin when they so much as look at each other in a way that’s anything but professional.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a withering echo

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly did not expect this to happen. I had been actively avoiding the third season of this show but then this name I didn't know kept being mentioned, mostly paired with John's ("Sholto," I thought. "Is [my friend] just spelling Sherlock's name wrong? Is this some fandom inside joke that I missed?") so I looked him up and then promptly forgot all about him. But posts kept showing up on my tumblr dash (all of them from the same person) and I started to think about John Watson and this apparently tragic Sholto character more and more and then [brienne-the-blue](http://brienne-the-blue.tumblr.com) convinced me to watch the episode so I totally did and now here I am writing fic. This is a lot shorter than I had imagined but, considering I haven't written fanfic since August 2013 and I haven't written anything not gen since May 2012, this is the best I could manage. I looked it over, cleaned up the obvious mistakes, but I'm sure I missed a few somewhere (I always do). The title comes from "From the Mouth of an Injured Head" by Radical Face.

_We shouldn’t be doing this._

It becomes a sort of mantra, starts with Sholto, muttered, sighed, wheezing in the damp air and John can feel the words under his skin when they so much as look at each other in a way that’s anything but professional. True, it starts with Sholto but it begins to leak into John as well and, soon enough, when they’re touching each other, awkward and fumbling, he hears the words in two different voices: _we shouldn’t be doing this._ It contaminates him and whenever they part ways, he feels unsatisfied and itchy.

“We need to talk about this,” he says to Sholto one night and he sees the man swallow heavily, blink his eyes, square his shoulders, turning himself into a wall and John wonders what it means that Sholto is expecting bad news (but, then again, every time the ‘we need to talk’ line had been used on him it had never been anything good). Shuffling of black and shined shoes, avoidance, static until, finally, John clears his throat but all of his rehearsed words have danced out of a window and, for awhile longer, they feed upon the silence.

“Do you want this to stop?” Sholto asks, quiet and unsure. This. What they do never has a definition, a proper name. It’s just: _This._ John blurts out:

“Do you?”

“I don’t understand—”

“‘We shouldn’t be doing this’,” John says and, for a moment, he almost hears Sholto’s voice coming out of his own mouth, his ears playing a trick on him and it throws him off enough that he nearly stumbles backwards. “If you don’t want—” 

_This._

_Me._

Sholto looks almost ashamed, head dipping down towards his shoes, arms still behind his back.

“I didn’t think you heard that.”

“I do. Hear it, I mean.” A voice in his head laughs at him. _Says something, doesn’t it. Afraid of the words ‘I do’._

“Of course I want—” Sholto exhales heavily. “I can’t help it, John.” It’s the first time he uses John’s first name on it’s own. It should be exhilarating and breathless, said while they’re tangled together and alone. But, instead, it’s said here, while they stand across from each other in an empty room, talking with stunted sentences about something neither of them are prepared to discuss. “I’ll stop.”

John knows he means he’ll stop saying it, but he feels like Sholto wants to say he’ll stop everything, completely and totally.

“I don’t want you to stop,” John says after Sholto leaves. “I want you to stop believing it.”

**

The problem is, though, is that the little parasite of a thought has wriggled so far into the creases of his brain, into the tissue of his muscles, that his own advice goes unheeded.

 _We shouldn’t be—_ Stop.

 _We shouldn’t—_ Shut it.

“Well, too bad,” John says out loud in bed one evening while he lays there by himself, “We are.”

**

John remembers the first time he started to see Sholto in a way that was more than just a passing, simple interest. When the pebble in his throat turned into a ball of paper that slide to his stomach and got lit on fire. He wonders, sometimes, what it was like when Sholto realized, when it was and, also, if there had been any others.

There had been no others (yet) for him.

 _We shouldn’t be doing this_ , sings the voice.

Maybe it’s right.

**

When it’s over, six months after it started, it’s John who ends it.

 _You did this_ , he wants to shout. _It’s your fault._

Sholto dug up those five words and re-planted them, watered them and then left them to their own devices, allowing them to grow until John was too blinded by the waxy leaves and thick roots to see anything else.

“We’ll be separated soon,” John says, and the inside of his mouth tastes sour. “I think we’d be better off.” 

“I suppose so.” Sholto doesn’t fight him and it makes John angry but he bottles it up, saves it for later. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “For awhile, I really did stop.”

John walks away first this time, marches off, leaves Sholto standing there like a tin soldier in need of a key stabbed and twisted into the hole in his back.

_At least one of us did._


End file.
